Principal Full Stack Engineer- i.AI

Job summary

About the job

The Incubator for AI (i.AI) builds AI products inside the UK government that change how public services work across education, health, planning, and parliament. Small teams, startup pace, national-scale impact. We are based in London, Bristol and Manchester, with hybrid working.

Job summary

We have a growing team of Full Stack Engineers building transformative AI products and infrastructure for the public good from consultation analysis in policymaking, to accelerating planning decisions, to enabling safe, effective AI tutoring in schools. As the team grows, we're creating a dedicated engineering management role so that people leadership gets the focus it deserves. Your job is to manage a group of Full Stack Engineers across one or more product teams owning their growth, performance and careers, hiring well, and building the engineering culture that helps talented people do their best work together.

This is a new role with real scope to shape it. You'll help define what engineering management looks like at i.AI, how we run progression, how we hire and onboard, the practices and rituals that make us work well together. We want someone who's seen what good looks like elsewhere and is willing to adapt it thoughtfully and collaboratively with the people here. You will report to the Head of Software Engineering.

Job description

Job description

What you'll do

• Line manage a group of engineers of varying seniority and skillsets across one or more product teams. The team is growing and how you structure your time across direct reports, hiring and culture work is something we'd want you to have opinions on.
• Coach and develop engineers at all levels from helping senior engineers navigate influence and ambiguity, to helping earlier-career engineers build confidence and technical judgement. Own performance and progression through clear expectations, honest feedback, and supporting people through career transitions.
• Hire well. Own the end-to-end hiring process for your roles from defining what good looks like, through sourcing and interviewing, to onboarding new joiners effectively.
• Create the conditions for engineers to do their best work. Remove blockers, address team health issues early, and ensure people have the clarity, autonomy and support they need.
• Shape engineering culture by introducing, iterating on and championing practices that help the team work well together whether that’s progression frameworks, engineering forums, team days, onboarding programmes, feedback rituals.
• Raise the bar for operational excellence across the engineering organisation, contributing to org-wide standards around quality, reliability, and how we work.
• Partner with senior leadership to align on priorities, represent engineering concerns, contribute to decisions about team structure and hiring plans, and bring organisational context back to your reports.

Person specification

Who you are

• You have significant experience managing engineers, with a track record of helping people grow, perform, and navigate their careers.
• You've managed across seniority levels from earlier-career engineers through to senior or lead engineers and you adapt your approach accordingly.
• You know how you like to manage and why. You can talk concretely about how you approach performance, feedback, difficult conversations, and team health.
• You're a strong hiring manager. You've designed or significantly improved hiring processes and you know how to assess for qualities that predict success.
• You're technically credible and can understand what your reports are working on, ask the right questions, and coach engineers through technical decisions, even if you're not writing code yourself.
• You communicate clearly and build trust with people at all levels whether that's giving direct feedback to a report, influencing senior leadership, or working through a disagreement with a peer.
• You're comfortable operating in ambiguity. You're energised by shaping things rather than inheriting a playbook.

You don't need to meet every criterion to apply. If this role excites you, we'd love to hear from you.

What we offer

Career-defining scope

• Backing from the Prime Minister and No10 to build AI products that transform public services.
• A new role at a pivotal moment. The team is growing and you'll shape engineering management, culture, and progression as we scale.
• Support engineers working at the cutting edge of AI in production, helping them grow while shipping products that matter.
• A team of talented, mission-driven engineers who care about the work.

Resources & support

• A leadership team that values people management as much as technical delivery.
• Flexible team structures and tooling, with room to experiment and innovate into new setups with full support.
• 5 days learning and development leave, annual L&D stipend, and funding for conferences and external collaborations.

Life & family*

• Opportunity to work from London, Manchester or Bristol offices.
• Hybrid working, flexibility for occasional remote work abroad and stipends for work-from-home equipment.
• Generous annual leave - 25 days plus one additional day for each year of service
• Generous paid parental leave (up to 39 weeks full pay + option for additional unpaid time).
• On top of your salary, we contribute 28.97% of your base salary to your pension.
• Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, dental insurance, donations and retail/gyms.

*These benefits apply to direct employees. Benefits may differ for people joining through other employment arrangements such as secondments.

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Technical take home testSecond interview in which we’ll review the technical testDetails of this will be sent to candidates ahead of time.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £69,675, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £20,184 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
• A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experie